


YoRHa Type-S: A Brief Chronology

by LouRea (MementoVitae)



Category: NieR: Automata (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Guadalcanal was rough, Headcanon, Implied 801S/3S, Literally every known scanner, Shounen YoRHa Stage Play (NieR: Automata), Worldbuilding, YoRHa Stage Play (NieR: Automata)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2020-12-20 20:40:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 6,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21062858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MementoVitae/pseuds/LouRea
Summary: A genealogy-based worldbuilding fic detailing the known YoRHa Scanners from eldest to youngest.(This started with me thinking about what order the scanners were born in and spiraled out into headcanons about their personalities and how they relate to each other.)





	1. 3S

He was born with the Bunker, for the Bunker. 12/12/11940.

It was his ability to manage and analyze vast sums of data and interface with the memories of so many units without throwing them into total disarray prompted the question of scanner aptitude for battle-adjacent purposes. He was also the only one among the prototype generation who didn’t have pre-installed memories. The No.3 personality at the time had false memories that were deemed too dangerous for a System Admin. Those of a serial killer.

He was an accidental proof of concept, prototype of a prototype without ever actually meaning to be. 

Having never been to Earth, he has never been destroyed or lost his memory. Barring the Commander's personal Operators, he has the longest unbroken memory of any existing YoRHa unit.

The other scanners rely on him as a source of experience. Not with the field, but with personal and practical matters. One need only to see how he hangs back and watches over his juniors to tell he’s at a different place in his existence than them. Despite minimal physical differences, his status as a non-combatant, and the seeming immaturity of his eternally drowsy demeanor he has a certain old soldier's worldliness. And their penchant for silence. 

A special clearance level exists just for him. What it entails is unknown; however he is unexpectedly close with the Commander and many of the Operators.

While he's infamous for sleeping days at a time, often until someone comes to wake him, he has a workaholic personality. Between those periods of sleep it's not uncommon for him to work weeks straight without pause. Some of the more keen personalities may get the feeling that these highs and lows with their peeks of playful nihilism and disregard for his well being are signs of some disturbance beneath his dozy waters. 

He did not always love to sleep, the older models say.

But then again, there was also a time he ignored his repairs and a time he didn't have strong feelings about hot, caffeinated drinks. 801S caused a lot of strange changes in his behavior, but most are largely consider to have been for the better. 

He still likes to sleep just as much as before--just not alone anymore.


	2. No.21 and No.22

Scanner No. 21 and Scanner No. 22 were the first scanners to be sent to Earth on a mission.

They shared adjacent numbers, but were not treated as paired units in this era and showed no inclinations toward seeing one another as ‘sister’ units.

The latter, No. 22, was quick-minded and extremely adept, but prone to compulsive lying. It was a quirk of her personality data that couldn’t be mitigated by any amount of reformatting or reprogramming. Her false memories as a con artist seemed to have something to do with this. While this would have been a mere annoyance demanding punitive measures in any other kind of unit, it was a fatal flaw for a type whose defining purpose was to provide reliable intel. When No. 22 was destroyed during the Pearl Harbor Descent, her model was decommissioned altogether.

The former, No. 21, while not as quick as No. 22, had a cool demeanor even in high-pressure situations, and her talent for analysis was top ranked among prototypes. She could become reckless where it concerned the lives of those she considered allies, but it was that very trait that led to the first known case of successful logic virus removal. That data went on to inform both future scanner protocols as well as the formation of early vaccines against logic virus infection.

She died while completing the server destruction mission at Mt. Ka’ala.

*****

Because the next iteration of scanners came about approximately around the time of the M001/M002 Experiments, Scanner No.21's data was re-used in a male model: M Unit Scanner No.21.

[For the sake of clarity and separation from the female unit of the same name, we will refer to him onward as 21S.]

By this time, the false memory protocols had been removed from YoRHa models, so 21S had none of No.21’s memories of being a human weaver. However, he did inherit No.21’s analytical capabilities and impersonal attitude. In order to temper some of the more emotional qualities of the 21 personality, a twin model was paired with him: M Unit Gunner No. 22.

Having a brother unit did not reduce the recklessness of the 21 personality. Instead, it funneled it toward the need to protect his sibling. The result was several illegal hacking operations into mission details he did not have clearance for, followed by an attempted coup with the goal of fleeing to the kingdom of night.

He suffered severe psychological malfunction after logic virus infection and even was able to combat and infect an early E unit. It was on the heels of this data that battle functionality was removed from scanner models.

21S model production was halted during the Atlantis incident and fully decommissioned by the time of the battle of Guadalcanal.


	3. 24S

24S was rolled out very shortly after the M Unit 21 and 22 models, but was not a part of the M002 Experiment.

While he lacked high outputs in analytical skill or speed, his precision and personality saw him put to extensive use during his active period. A standalone male unit and the first to go on solo intel gathering missions to Earth, he was popular among curious operators for his efficiency and with the Commander for his strong self-preservation instincts. His missions consistently went well, and he produced a significant amount of data in the field of machine subjugation and control through hacking.

3S recalls warming to 24S as an another anomaly among scanners--a control to the more advanced but more experimental scanners thus far.

24S had fleeting interactions with Instructor Black. Though his loyalty to Commander White was without question, he saw Black as a mentor. He wasn't one for personal requests nor did he have an especially robust emotional spectrum, but 3S recalls him once quietly expressing that it would be nice to work with a team and have a captain.

In a sense, he got his wish. Three new scanners were rolled out in June to assist in the effort to gain control of the Atlantis situation. While the Commander wasn't confident in the decision to create a team of only scanners, the Council of Humanity's edict was that the self-preservation instinct of 24S was important given intel that the fusion had begun with a machine and YoRHa combining.

Because he was the last scanner model with combat routines pre-installed, 24S considered it his responsiblity to protect his juniors from that fate. Their record was not perfect, but mission fatalities remained low, and cooperation among the four was extremely high.

While his model wasn’t decommissioned, the higher end models that came after him eventually pushed out the need for an active model of his type and he was very aware of this. He requested a highly dangerous mission during Guadalcanal, and successfully turned a portion of the fusion against itself before detonating his black box.

Due to his exemplary service record, deploy-ready 24S models can still be found in the body storage facility.

He is remembered like an older brother by those who succeeded him: 1S, 4S, and 11S.


	4. 1S

**"M002 Experimental Unit Final Report - Male units displayed greater strength as compared to female units of the same type, however their ability to systematically cooperate was unacceptably poor."**

The burden of those words was felt from the moment 1S, 4S, and 11S began their lives. In light of that fact, it becomes easy to understand their connection to 24S, to the scanners who would come after them, and most importantly to one another.

It is common to hear that the false memory system was abolished among YoRHa units. This is correct. However, it requires a key disclaimer: Android recall of installed memories is no longer possible. Personality is fundamentally tied to experiences. For a standard, predictable personality to be associated with a given number, it requires identical base experiences to exist somewhere under the hood. With that, deviations would only occur as the unit accrued additional, unique experiences. 

All of this to say: 1S no longer had access to memories of being a political leader, but that didn't stop him from acting like one the moment he was rolled out. 

24S' excellence in the realm of self-preservation while still achieving mission success wasn't as simple as data that could be installed on the newer models. The Council of Humanity thought it was something that needed to be instilled. But the Number 1 personality was designed to take point on missions. Shadowing a team leader who was less technically advanced than him was humiliating. Having his two peers trust such a relic over him was like having nails hammered into his circuits. Not to mention the issue of of 11S, who was always quick to be snide and pessimistic and often picked fights. 

For 1S, these were conditions of being that should have caused him to snap early on. But he never did. He bore his mounting frustrations with a smile, never spoke a word to anyone, and tried to keep the peace. Even to the point of never being confrontational even though he hated 11S' guts at the time (hard to imagine for younger models, as they're quite close now). To do anything else was to invite the rest of YoRHa to think 'Ah, that report was right after all, huh.'

He just... genuinely wanted them to be seen as more than M002's legacy.

There's no exact point he remembers things magically getting better, but he does recall after about a month, 24S took him aside and told him he would be responsible from then on for ensuring the team's safety during deep infiltration. Suddenly he had something to take point on, and it was their job to listen to him. Almost immediately, he let it go to his head so badly that he nearly cost 4S his life and 24S had to step in and take control. 

In the scolding that followed, 24S made 1S aware that his goals were misplaced. He was an S-type. Whether their team was a failure or a success, scanners would all work alone some day. 1S was not there to learn leadership, but support of a common goal. That meant keeping calm, keeping safe, and knowing his role. 

Asked about this period in his life now, 1S might laugh. 24S told him he was arrogant to think the only way they'd succeed was by doing things his way. At the time, he took this very hard. Now, he understands that he was frightened and anxious because of the expectation of failure looming over them and he let it get to him. 

The talent that he would go on to use to great effect for the rest of the Atlantis Incident was for control-hopping. Chaining machine after machine together until he infiltrated deep into enemy territory where he could misdirect enemy movements to create openings. He knows now that the potential for consciousness merging and/or logic virus infection during this process is some of the highest there is, and attributes his minimal fatalities to his time under 24S. 

1S was the only one 24S told in advance about the suicide mission during Guadalcanal.

He considers it an unspoken form of having been passed the responsibility of caring for future scanners. Though he's perhaps the most uptight of the bunch, he is always the first to entertain an idea that might improve conditions or make their missions safer and take it to the development teams. This reliable personality has made him well liked among Operators, and it's even easy for him to get things that are technically against protocol. 

While all scanners are important to him, he considers 4S and 11S like brothers. 


	5. 4S

24S was the authority that kept the scanner team alive during Atlantis and Guadalcanal. This much is irrefutable. But he cannot be thanked for their overwhelming success as a male-only team, nor the excellent relations between scanner models from that generation onward.

That is an accolade that rests solely on the shoulders of 4S.

Between 1S, who wanted their performance and cooperative ability to be perfect, and 11S, who maintained a querulous and bitterly defeatist attitude in response to the expectation of failure, 4S took a fiery but very simple middle ground: He just wanted to prove everyone else wrong, and he wanted the three of them to do that together.

It continues to amaze them both, and most modern scanners as well, how much he accomplishes with only such straightforward goals on his mind.

4S has a certain brightness of character that allows him to easily endears himself to others. He does display signs of quick temper when he feels his friends are threatened, but he is usually just as quick to cool off. His optimism is unabashed, but rarely so naïve that it blinds him—when 4S decides a thing can be done, the universe has to align to stop him, or it will be done.

In early debriefs, 1S and 11S reported with some embarrassment that it required more effort to _not_ get along with 4S. They quickly grew out of this, as it turned out to be the experience everyone had with him once he decided upon befriending them. 

Unbeknownst to 4S, all the things that made him shine on a team of scanners were the very things that had caused the decommission of the No.4 personality for combat purposes based on the trial run of Attacker Number 4.

3S occasionally suggests, in private only, that the No. 4 personality was too powerful to leave as a combat model. He never elaborates, but he doesn’t need to. The only one who doesn’t seem to understand those words is 4S himself.

While he doesn’t have a well-defined technical ability, he does possess an uncanny savviness for data pathing to obscure answers and predictive multivariate analyses which usually turn out to be true. Under 24S, and in modern missions, he typically puts this skill to use determining the best entry and exit strategies.

For a little while, he lived with the nickname Oracle, but some of the operators got it in their head that he could predict personal matters. Which he…actually could with frightening accuracy—the more complex the better. He didn’t mind at all and was happy to hand out all manner of advice about love and happiness until eventually, the Commander had to step in.

Since then he goes by the scanners-only nickname ‘4cast’, which was bestowed on him by 42S and is universally regarded as the least clever thing a scanner has ever said. (It’s still used on a semi-frequent basis with glowing fondness.)

Command has had a difficult time replicating his ability to answer hard questions and make accurate predictions—even the pods lag behind him when it comes to matters that involve more than hard data. Like 24S’ disposition toward self-preservation, 4S’ ability to consider many kinds of variables, whether hard and nominal or fluid and emotional, and provide accurate insight seems to be innate.

4S claims it is ‘woman’s intuition.’

This does not appear to be a joke, though it’s been noted that 3S smiles like he has heard something nostalgic whenever he hears 4S make that claim.

This is one of a few behaviors he has that are vaguely recognized to be non-standard for a male model. Because android data on human gender norms is unmanageably broad, often severely contradictory, and poorly understood after global research efforts, this behavior goes largely unremarked on in favor of reprimanding him for his unexpected stubborn streak. For being so easy to like, he’s actually quite rebellious, and the most troublesome after 42S.

Operators know him for the string of minor rule infractions that follow him wherever he goes. Dyeing his hair to unapproved colors, altering his uniform for aesthetic purposes, and most egregiously: trying on human artifacts he finds on earth.

(This is simultaneously the most and least harshly penalized of his violations. It’s against the Legacy Reclamation protocols of the Human Heritage Restoration Management Organization, but Operators are known to take great interest in Earth as the only models who are constantly watching it but never allowed to go, and few among them can resist a photo of 4S wearing a shirt with a cat on it, even if it is so tattered it’s barely recognizable.)

When 24S was gone and the new models were released in the wake of Guadalcanal, 4S didn’t do anything special. He just reached out to them and continued to be 4S. The belief that scanners should stick together and look out for one another came from him, as did their tradition of getting together to discuss subjects that wouldn’t be well understood by other models.

There isn’t a scanner he knows that he wouldn’t call friend, but 4S considers 1S and 11S to be in their own category: His _best_ friends.


	6. 11S

Of the trio of Guadalcanal era scanners, 11S is the one who felt the pressure of existing in M002’s shadow most keenly. As a result, he is also the one who came closest to being crushed by that pressure.

Where his peers took refuge in professionalism and bullheaded insistence on friendship, 11S internalized the conditions they endured. He might not be a failed unit alone, but he was a part of a team whose failure was already presumed. They were expected to go out and fail over and over again until command finally abolished the group. No one expected them to make a difference. No one expected them to accomplish anything. Even when they did, it was regarded with dull surprise, even pity—like they were making the inevitable worse by bothering to succeed at all.

So he gave up. And with giving up came lashing out.

Due to the pronounced differences in their personality, 1S was often the target of these angry, cynical outbursts. His insistence on efficiency, perfection, and his blatant belief that he could lead them better than 24S looked stupid to 11S. But nothing pissed him off more than 1S pretending to be so calm and friendly even though he clearly hated everything 11S did. The animosity was mutual, but for 11S it was like battery acid biting into everything he touched, where for 1S it was like water behind a dam that refused to open even the tiniest spillway.

4S proved a much harder prospect to be so bitter with. Sure, 11S disliked his simplicity and borderline violent optimism, but it was hard and unrewarding work to try and keep up a spiteful attitude around 4S. The only time 11S can remember 4S getting angry enough to actually fight with him, it was because 11S had purposefully endangered himself.

After that, 24S had taken great pains (that 11S never discusses) to impress on him that he could get _them_ killed if he did not do his part and take care of himself. From then on, he at least absorbed a sense of self-preservation, if not necessarily any self-worth.

He admits openly now that many of his actions were stupid and self-fulfilling, but he never apologizes. A whole bunker full of androids who saw him as a waste of effort had floated over him since the moment he was born. What was he supposed to think? What was he supposed to _do_? Prohibit his emotions? Nobody else was bothering to.

Yet in spite of everything, their team began to come together into something he could believe in. And far more importantly, 4S, 24S, and eventually even 1S believed in him and came to rely on him.

He has a talent for making dense information brief, understandable, and actionable to non-scanners without losing important details. A skill that wasn’t too important within a team of scanners but was crucial when they intermingled with other units.

11S is said to have been closest 0to 24S. While the older scanner put his missions above all else and wasn’t given much to frivolous actions, he did have a habit of whistling. It was obvious that he learned to do it for covert short-range communications, but he whistled whenever they had downtime too. If they were in particularly secluded areas or known secure zones, he could easily be found making grass whistles or leaf flutes, and if he was in a good mood he’d even make a flute out of his hands (a trick that none of them were able to master in spite of his willingness to teach.)

It’s likely that habit of his mentor that gave 11S a sense for melody and music. He can often be heard humming while he analyzes. It’s often easy to tell when he’s been back on the Bunker or found a new song as the maintenance bay is often the first to hear him and the first to find themselves imitating the notes.

Despite these melodious tendencies, 11S can be a sharp-edged speaker. He gives off the impression he expects his peers to be responsible and act sensibly—despite his own wastefully confrontational past. He has perhaps the least sentimental attachment to the rest of the scanners, but he claims they’re all his allies and they don’t need to be more than that for him to have their back.

That said, his manner is easiest when he’s with 4S and 1S. Rather than being friend or family, every once in a while he can be heard saying they’re like home to him.


	7. 32S & 42S

In September of 11942 the dust of Guadalcanal was still settling. The battle had been won, the fused machines destroyed, and the machine city of Atlantis returned to the bottom of the sea. 32S and 42S were rolled out during the lull that follows all such battles.

It is difficult to tell if their atypical innocence stems from being born during such a low-hostility period or from the fact that they lack false memory bases. Their generation marked the end of scanner units who had any implanted memories at all, even those that were compressed.

3S recounts it as a somewhat exciting time for him. He had no idea what kind of personality to expect from them. They would be inquisitive and observant of course—all scanners were, but any number of traits could (and did) revolve around those base imperatives. As it would turn out, neither of the two would have any special hacking proficiencies the way the previous generation did. Most likely this was due to the lack of a team structure with a leader who might be able to identify areas in which they showed high affinity or greater performance.

This is not to say they had no specialties at all. Both do.

In interpersonal domains.

* * *

32S shows an oddly strong sense of camaraderie with ground-based non-YoRHa androids. If there is a fringe group or any stray units in a sector he has been assigned to, he will almost always go out of his way to make their acquaintance and make himself useful to them. For this reason, he is frequently assigned to zones where YoRHa has never touched down before. Resistance androids are often wary of unfamiliar models showing up unexpectedly, some of them aggressively so. Sending 32S as an ambassador has led to a marked decrease in friendly fire incidents. (It helps, of course, that 32S is a scanner since a unit physically incapable of combat has minimal potential as a threat.)

His reception aboard the Bunker is a bit more on the mixed side. He regards Earth with a sort of optimistic wonder and is constantly returning data that isn’t mission-related, especially data concerning food and eating—which seems to be a hobby for him. This has been allowed to slide with minimal reprimand because he occasionally makes a discovery about chemical reactions with certain substances. The R&D teams love it. His Operators are understandably less forgiving.

The maintenance and repair bay usually greets any work order for him with annoyance. 32S is often damaged, occasionally because of the food he eats or a poor first impression, but usually because he has thrown himself into danger for resistance members. It might be great for relations, but he is often reminded that he is an expensive, highly specialized piece of machinery who should not be laying down his life for outdated models from a hundred years ago.

While he will acknowledge that he is a more expensive and more advanced model, he admits among the privacy of other scanners that it feels wrong to not protect the resistance members. If he dies, he gets to come back with some memories missing.

If _they _die, they don’t get to come back at all.

* * *

42S is a similar sort of case, but in the opposite direction, and perhaps for the opposite reasons. He is personable and laid back and might be accurately described as having a ‘sunny’ disposition despite being full of dark humor about all the dangers of earth. While he is rarely assigned to actual group work, his disposition for tension-relief and raising inspiration among YoRHa models makes him a key candidate for site-based work. He loves the concept of humor the way 32S loves to eat.

Only trouble being that 42S primarily tells bad jokes.

His opinion is that if you laugh, or even if your mind is off the battle for a moment, then the joke is successful. The other scanners, who have never been in the field with him but have had to endure being the test group for many of his jokes, have each been the recipient of a nickname that illustrates his…_particular_ sense of humor.

  * 1S AKA “Sunshine”. Given precisely because 1S the most stone-faced and least cheerful of them all.
  * 3S AKA “Crowd”, based on the human saying: ‘Three’s a crowd’.
  * 4S AKA “4-Cast”, because of 4S’ well-known penchant for accurate prediction. Often forms the opener of their conversations with a line to the tune of ‘What’s the weather, 4-Cast?’.
  * 9S AKA “Greenhorn”. Because 9S is the ‘youngest’. 
    * He refuses to change it despite everyone else moving on to using ‘Nines’.
  * 11S AKA “Dixie”. Because he’s always whistling. Reference to another human idiom that none of them really understand the full meaning of.
  * 32S AKA “Canary”. Perhaps the blackest of his humor, referring to the coal mine canary who dies first if the situation is unsafe. 
    * He does not bother to hide that it’s because he doesn’t like 32S being sent in alone to make contact with leery and understandably high-strung ground units.
  * 801S AKA ‘Eighty-One’. A nickname more or less meant to riff on 9S going by ‘Nines’.

They are all pretty much regarded as terrible, but every single one of them will readily admit that for all their groaning, they are fond of the stupid nicknames. 42S never really bothered with a nickname for himself, but the group more or less unanimously decided to call him ‘MC Mischief’ after he started getting assigned to DJ at ground sites.

They were not built to be a pair and they do not resemble one another in the slightest, but somehow 32S and 42S will always appear together on the rare occasions both are on the Bunker at the same time. If one observes them when it is just the two of them, it becomes clear they’re two sides of a coin and are quite close. They even have special nicknames that only they use, which 32S apparently generated after the first time 42S showed signs of interest in wordplay:

‘Free’ and ‘Easy’.


	8. 9S

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are only spoilers for Bildungsroman here if you squint really, really hard.

Technically Unit 9S was created before 24S. His official rollout date in the records is 1/30/11942, a full three months before M002 went live. The reason he is considered to be second youngest is because, by all accounts, pre-and post-Guadalcanal versions of his model were not the same person.

It should be noted this is not meant with the brief but crushing sense of personal loss that YoRHa units all eventually face when they experience the reality of the missing time between a memory back-up and a death.

9S did not come back as an earlier iteration of himself. He came back _different_.

Pre-Guadalcanal 9S was borderline experimental. Extremely curious, extremely advanced, startlingly tenacious. And withdrawn. He spent most of his time off the Bunker on the kind of missions that other units at the time could not have dreamed of completing successfully, but even on the rare occasions he came back, he seemed unable to get comfortable with the other scanners. He spent his time fighting with R&D to create a machine that would allow scanners to practice known hacking patterns, creating internal programs to fend off counter-hacking attempts for use by combat-oriented units, improving logic virus vaccine success rates. The initial 9S and the one that would come later shared a similar prodigiousness and desire to be useful, but the fore’s demeanor was clumsier. He wanted other YoRHa units to be safe and prepared, but there was something bitter to him.

3S believes that 9S was kind even then; that all of his snappy behaviors and preoccupation with countermeasures wasn’t to soothe a bored intellect but to help other androids. Like 1S, he cared immensely for his peers. (In that era the two engaged in ferocious arguments, but 1S always seems to recall them with a certain fondness and claims they worked well together.) But there was always a barrier around him. Something that left him unable to settle down even the company of other scanners.

Like he was embarrassed. Like he didn’t belong.

Then Guadalcanal happened. The old 9S spent two months on increasingly dire missions, watching countless androids fall. He began to question why it was all happening. He scraped and gouged for every tiny detail, even going so far as to try and hack the fusion. When he couldn’t find answers, he turned his abilities on the Bunker’s servers. Whatever he found, he never revealed. During the battle of Tarawa, he made another attempt to hack the fusion. 

By all accounts, the effort was not successful. He should have been freshly revived and on his way within an hour of his black box signal being lost, but no further iterations of him were released. It wasn’t until after Guadalcanal that he was seen on the Bunker again. Some mention was made of damage to his personality data, and he was quietly given a second orientation—something that had never happened to any scanner in the past.

The new 9S strolled around the Bunker with a calmer, friendlier demeanor. He talked to others. In fact, he talked _a lot_, about pretty mundane things. He smiled a lot and was easy to make laugh. He wasn’t humble, but he was easily flustered by praise. He didn’t recognize any of the things he helped build. He didn’t remember Guadalcanal.

He invited others to call him ‘Nines’.

And most strangely of all, he was partnered with a B unit.


	9. 801S

06 June 11944. It is the day of the battle of Normandy.

A full assault team of a hundred YoRHa join 4,500 androids from the Army of Humanity. They are wiped out decisively. It is the bitterest defeat suffered by android-kind in thousands of years. 

16 June 11944, 1:08 AM. 801S is rolled out for the first time.

He is a scanner who is to be permanently assigned to the Bunker. Specifically, he will operate out of the maintenance and repair bay. 

At the start, his existence is met with the same confused sentiment by almost everyone who meets him: Why they didn’t just build an H model?

But time moves on. Units on the brink of death return to the Bunker from time to time, carrying data too important to lose. 801S has half of a healer’s memory capacity, but the fastest data transfer speed on the Bunker, and every bit of a Scanner’s capacity for rapid analysis and split-second decisions. Soon enough, he is Head of Specialty Maintenance and no one bothers him about why he was built to such unusual specifications.

In private, 801S was also curious why he wasn’t an H unit. A question he would eventually share with 3S, whom he had grown close to as the only other scanner who never left the Bunker. The conclusion 801S came to after the older unit let slip that there was no back up of his body in storage was the natural one: He must be a prototype. And it didn't require much to put it together that some part of his design was based on the most advanced of the scanners.

He had 9S’ tenacity but was less impulsive and less obsessively curious. At rollout, he shared his kindness and desire to be useful to others, though the nature of maintenance would eventually harden him and make him short-tempered over time. They shared a similar lack of humility, 9S’ expressed through immodesty regarding his skills and 801S’ through vanity regarding his appearance.

Unbeknownst to either of them, they also shared a dislike for feeling alone and need for a strong connection with someone—a connection 801S would grow into with 3S.

It was a hot and cold sort of thing at first. 3S constantly required specialty maintenance due to his reckless work habits and improvement was slow. But 3S made up for this by describing Earth based on extraneous data stored by Operators (which he was constantly having to delete). 801S originally mistook this as loneliness from the older unit. He was the only male unit on the Bunker, after all. 3S cleared that misconception up within 3 months.

Now it would be almost impossible to conceal that they’re close, but only the more nosy or observant types (meaning 4S, 1S, and a few of the assistant operators in the server maintenance and repair departments) are aware that their relationship is anything more than friendly. The strain of their respective occupations necessitates regular upkeep for both of them, so to the casual observer, 3S is air-headed and irresponsible and 801S is the one taking on the tall task of looking after him. 

Though he is the youngest scanner and definitely has a fitting rebellious streak to him, there is a worldliness to 801S. A sort of dry fatalism carefully concealed with thrill-chasing. Since he’s Head of Maintenance, he largely limits this to letting 4S make interesting adjustments to his uniform and hanging out on some of the exterior platforms where gravity is low and the view is of the stars and the deep void of space. 3S, who is the only person he welcomes to join him there, has occasionally teased him for being something of a romantic, but they’re both aware it’s because 801S doesn’t care about the Earth or the Moon.

This appears to be a symptom of his lack of attachment to humanity. He prefers to explore the outer bounds of being an android, often going without antimagnetic skin covering his body plates or opting to utilize his speakers instead of bothering to move his lips. He often criticizes the idea that he has any physical sex or any gender that is not as changeable as the parts he is made of. To him, these are biological things there is no reason at all for him to imitate. He even (quietly) expresses frustration that androids don't try a more efficacious design to win the war. 

But 801S doesn't waste too much time on those thoughts. He doesn't think about the future too hard either. He's the type who won't indulge himself in too much optimism, especially when it involves something he secretly wants. Just like 9S, he's shrewd enough to know the eventual fate of a prototype. One day they will collect whatever data they made him for and his life will come to an end. He comforts himself through this harsh inevitability with 3S' company. Never with fairytales.

Little did he know that the time they spent together made 3S believe in fairytales with the kind of conviction that would alter not only 801S' fate, but the fate of hundreds of YoRHa.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That last line is just a tiny kiss I'm blowing up to the sky for my A Devil Walks the Dragonsphere readers.
> 
> If you don't follow me on twitter: I am absolutely planning an 801S/3S fic about life on the Bunker for the year between 801S' rollout and the start of Route C. If you want weird and confusing android romance and even weirder android smut, keep an eye out for 'Upon A Bridge of Clockwork Magpies' sometime in summer~


End file.
